BlackRock and Green Capitalism Won’t Save the Planet
The rise of trillion-dollar investment firms like BlackRock has resulted in a massive, unprecedented concentration of economic power. BlackRock’s Larry Fink may use green rhetoric, but his company won’t take real action to address the climate crisis.
A pedestrian passes in front of a statue of a bull in the Wall Street area in New York City where rains from Hurricane Floyd hit on September 16, 1999. (Doug Kanter / AFP via Getty Images)
At the start of this year, the investment fund BlackRock reached a new peak, with ten trillion dollars in assets. The company’s CEO Larry Fink has become one of the most influential figures in global capitalism, and Fink’s annual letter to BlackRock shareholders is a news event in itself.
The rise of passive-investment firms like BlackRock since the financial crisis of 2008 has been one of the biggest stories in global capitalism, leading to an unprecedented concentration of economic power. It also has huge implications for the way we respond to the climate crisis.
Adrienne Buller is a senior research fellow at Common Wealth and the author of The Value of a Whale: On the Illusions of Green Capitalism.
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